


Interlude

by ameliacareful



Series: Massa Carnis [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean freaks, Dean is having a difficult time, M/M, Sam can't figure out Dean, Slave Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 12:14:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12432624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: An interlude on the road.  While Sam heals, Dean tackles the complicated job of getting Sam freed.  The whole business of slavery wears more and more on Dean while the fear of being useless weighs on Sam.





	Interlude

            “Dad, it’s Dean. Look, I can understand if you don’t have time to call me but this is about Sam.” Dean holds his cell in his hand and takes a breath. “I wanted to tell you in person but since I can’t get in touch with you, I’m just going to tell you over the phone. Sam is our Sammy. Missouri told me. Your kid. My brother. We’ve got to do something, he can’t stay like this. Some assholes nearly killed him, broke his hand and his jaw and bruised his kidneys. CALL ME.”

            Before those dickwads busted his jaw, Sam had been asking more and more questions. What’s a realtor? How many people live in a house? (Anywhere from one to, Dean shrugged and pulled a number out of the air, twenty. Usually two to four or five, including kids.) Sam had lived in a condo for two years with a man who had Parkinson’s, acting as ‘service stock’ but he didn’t really know much about free people. He said on TV it was hard to tell what was normal. Dean explained he really wasn’t an expert on normal and hadn’t lived anywhere permanent since he was four.

            Sam asked if there were a lot of people like Dean?

In some ways, Sam was a little like a Martian, dropped in a culture that he didn’t understand. The Harry Potter movies, video games and fettucini alfredo were all strange. In other ways, he knew stuff Dean never expected him to know. Shit about planets and astronomy, about nature. Weird things about history like the fact that Roman plumbing had lead in it and lead, apparently, made people stupid.

            Now that he has to speak through a jaw wired shut, he just doesn’t speak much at all. Sam doesn’t write very well. He had mostly taught himself to read but Dean never thought about how at school they made you write all the time. Sam writes laboriously, holding the pen weird. He writes his letters different, writing a lower case ‘a’ like it’s written in books rather than the way Dean realized now he had learned to print it in school. Sam didn’t like to do it.

            Dean had completely let his brother down. His brother who had been a slave for more than twenty years and who Dean had put in an impossible position.

            ( _Your fault, your fault,_ his brain supplies. _You left him. Like you left him for all those years._ I didn’t know, he tells himself, I thought he was dead. Dad told me he was dead. Like Dean’s brain cares.)

            Now Dean’s sitting in front of a string of dorky little offices in some low rent office complex. He’s holding his phone like he’s got his dick in his hand and he’s wondering what he’a getting into.

            The door says, James Kurston Jr, Attorney. Winchesters don’t usually work in a world of lawyers.

            It’s a little tiny place with a desk for a receptionist/admin in front but no assistant/admin. The floor is industrial beige. There’s a blue flowered couch that looks as if someone found it on the street and a standing lamp that screams Ikea.

            “Hey!” Dean calls.

            The guy that comes out of the office is big. Sam takes after their dad in his build, but _more_ —taller, broader shoulders. This guy isn’t as tall as Dean but he’s big and doughy. He’s wearing cream colored slacks and a white shirt and he looks rumpled.

            “Jimmy Kurston,” the guy says, holding out his hand.

            This had to be a mistake, Dean thinks. He’d researched this guy. He shakes, “Dean,” he says.

            “So, Dean,” Jimmy Kurston says, “what can I do for you?”

            “My brother’s a slave,” Dean says.

            Kurston nods.

 

#

 

            Kurston hands him a thing to fill out on a clipboard, kind of like those things they give in doctor’s offices. Dean sits down on the blue flowered couch and studies the form.

            Dean puts his name and phone number, skips the address.

            Name of Stock: _Sam Winchester_

            Stock ID:

 

Dean didn’t bring Sam’s title so he doesn’t know. He skips it.

 

            Felon: _No_

            Purpose for Manumission

  * Marriage
  * Wrongly incarcerated
  * Other



 

Dean circles ‘Other’.

There’s a lot to skip because there’s a lot about history of arrest, incarceration, stuff like that. He circles ‘no’ next to Violent offender?

            “Hey,” Dean says. “This stuff doesn’t really have anything to do with my brother.”

            Kurston comes out and sits on the edge of the desk. He’s in his forties and has bruises under his eyes and longish hair on top of his head. “What do you mean?”

            “Sam’s not a felon,” Dean says.

            “Oh,” Kurston says. “I thought you said he was your brother.”

            “He is my brother,” Dean says.

            “You were a slave?” Kurston says.

            “No,” Dean says. “Of course not.”

            “Is one of your parents a felon?”

            Technically his dad could be considered a felon but he’s never been convicted so, no. He does not mention this to Kurston.

            It’s the most perplexing conversation until Kurston explains that slaves are either felons or come from breeding farms and if Sam is a breed stock, then how can Dean be his brother since breed stock comes from slaves.

            “No,” Dean says. “My dad put him foster care or up for adoption or something and I found out that he was a slave.”

            “Who owns him?”

            “I do,” Dean says.

            “How do you know he’s your brother?” Kurston says patiently.

            “I know, okay? We can do a DNA test or some shit if you need us to.”

            “I’m sure I’d have to. Understand, if this guy is your boyfriend, I can’t get him out of the system. I want to be totally clear about that.”

            “MY BOYFRIEND?!” Dean stands up. ( _He jacked you off_ , says a voice in his head. _And it felt great. You used him._ ) “MY BROTHER HAS BEEN A SLAVE FOR TWENTY-TWO YEARS, DOUCHEBAG, AND I WILL GET HIM OUT OF THE SYSTEM IF I HAVE TO SHOOT EVERYBODY IN THIS COUNTRY!” Dean really wants to punch this asshole.

            Kurston shrugs. “No offense. I just want you to understand what I can and can’t do. But I’m telling you, your story makes no sense.”

            “I’m telling you the truth,” Dean says.

            “I am sure you believe it. But with only a few exceptions, there are only two ways to be legally declared _massa carnis_ in this country. The most common way is through a third strike felony conviction or committing a capital offense and being sentenced to slavery. The other is to be born of two slaves.”

            “Massa what?” It sounded like Latin and the second word sounded like meat.

            “ _Massa carnis_ , ‘insensible flesh’. It’s a hangover from a time when being a slave meant you weren’t considered human. It means without a soul.” Kurston smiles. “I’m Jewish so the whole soul thing doesn’t really do it for me personally, but there are a lot of people who take it seriously.”

            “When I was four, someone snuck into our house and set the nursery on fire,” Dean said. “Sammy was six months old. I carried him out of the house. Later, my dad said that Sammy was dead but it turned out he, like, gave him up. I found my brother a few months ago. He’s a slave. Barcode, title, weird certifications, whole nine yards. You can tell me that’s not possible but it is.”

            Kurston narrowed his eyes. Dean saw suddenly that under all that ‘just telling you’ there was iron. “You can prove that?”

            “I can prove he’s my brother. DNA, right? People knew us. I mean, his birth certificate is somewhere, right?”

            Kurston’s eyes glittered. “Dean, if what you’re saying is true, you’ve got yourself a lawyer.”

            “You can get him freed?”

            “I can get him freed.”

            “I don’t have much money,” Dean says.

            Kurston nodded. “Me, neither. But let’s take this one step at a time. There are things we can do, starting with that DNA test. How do you feel about a little publicity?”

            “No,” Dean said, imagining John. “No. No publicity.”

 

#

           

            Sam is at the laptop when Dean comes back. His head snaps up as Dean opens the door. Dean never knows what to make of that—it isn’t just alertness. There’s a whole lot swirling around Sam for Dean. He only feels really relaxed these days when he knows exactly where Sam is.

            Looking at Sam he can’t see the wiring holding his jaw shut. They’re supposed to get it off in another week. The way it holds Sam’s jaw makes his cheekbones higher. When he looks up at Dean with those slightly tilted every-changing eyes…

            “Hey, Sammy,” Dean says, too loud.

            Sam gestures to the laptop. “Researching ‘the Watcher’,” he says, teeth together.

            Dean frowns.

            “We can go back now,” Sam says. They were investigating a case involving someone or something calling itself ‘the watcher’. Dean left Sam at the library and when Sam went across the street for a cup of coffee, he attracted the attention of some nutcases who decided they wanted to play around with a slave. Now his left hand was in a cast and his jaw was wired.

            “We, ah—” Dean’s mind is still on the attorney. “We don’t need to go back.”

            “I think I know what it is,” Sam says.

            “Doesn’t matter.”

            “We can’t not go because of what happened,” Sam says.

            “I called somebody,” Dean says. “Someone else can take care of it.”

            “I’m fine,” Sam says which is funny considering he said it without being able to open his mouth.

            Dean laughs. “Yeah, you’re fine,” he agrees. “How much of that Ensure crap have you had today?”

            Sam looks back at the laptop. Holds up two fingers.

            Two cans. “You gotta eat more. Drink more.”

            Sam’s shoulders fall.

            “I know you’re sick of it. Look, I’ll get you a milkshake. You gotta get calories.”

            Sam nods. He gets up and grabs a can of vanilla dietary supplement, shakes it. He sticks a straw in it and sits down at the computer again.

            Dean waits.

            Sam rolls his eyes a little but takes a long sip. Then he clicks and turns the laptop towards Dean.

            A case.

            Dean doesn’t even read the page. “Not yet. Besides, we got some other things to take care of. We’re getting our DNA tested.”

            Sam’s head jerks up and his eyes meet Dean’s, startled, before he looks back down like he wasn’t supposed to look at Dean.

            “It’s the first step in getting you free,” Dean says.

            “Is it expensive?” Sam asks quietly.

            Dean almost snaps, ‘who cares?’ but instead he just says, “No.”

 

#

 

            That night, after Dean has gone out and gotten a burger and brought Sam back soup and a milkshake, they sit on their respective beds and watch TV. Dean is getting royally sick of this particular motel. The wall paper in the bathroom is of Scotty Dogs and the room is somebody’s idea of Scottish. There’s plaid bedspreads and a painting of a field with a stone wall over each bed.

            There is nothing on television.

            Sam gets up pours whiskey in a motel glass and taps Dean on the shoulder. “You’re tense.”

            This is code for, ‘I’ll give you a back rub.’ But the last back rub ended up with Sam jerking him off to ‘relax’ him. He knows Sam worked in a massage parlor that was really just prostitution. He was drunk the last time Sam gave him a back rub and he let it happen. He didn’t know then that Sam was his brother.

            He prefers women. Not going to say he hasn’t tried switch hitting. Dean has made it his mission to try almost everything he can that might be fun. Sex with a guy was okay but he didn’t like it like sex.

            “You’ve got only one hand,” Dean points out.

            Sam shrugs like, so what? and the truth is he can do a lot with the hand in a cast. The cast runs across half his palm but his thumb and fingers are free.

            “I’m okay, Sam.”

            Sam stands for a long hopeful minute like a dog begging but Dean sips his drink and watches the TV. Eventually he smiles at Sam a little and says, “Thanks for the whiskey.”

            Sam slumps back down on his bed.

            He’s not wearing shoes. After a moment he skins out of his socks. Then he takes off his shirt, so he’s just wearing a t-shirt. Dean has no idea what the kid is doing. He thinks about asking if it’s too hot but Sam seems weirdly deliberate.

            Sam flops on the bed. He has long feet and freakishly long toes. Okay, not freakishly. They’re nice feet, actually. They’re like his hands only more…foot-like. _Brilliant, Winchester. Can see how these winning moves make you popular with the ladies._

            Sam sits up after a moment and he pulls his t-shirt over his head. He’s been working running and doing push-ups and his biceps and forearms are muscular and veined. Dean never thought he’d be admiring someone’s veins. Sam sits down again. He hasn’t looked at Dean since he started this weird strip tease. He watches TV for a bit and then, not taking his eyes off the screen, slowly and deliberately takes off his belt.

            He holds it for a minute, cheap thrift store belt. The drops it on his shirt and shoes. He lays back down on the bed in nothing but jeans and boxers. And his cast which is still startlingly white, even a few weeks after getting it on. Isn’t like there’s anyone to sign it.

            Sam’s belly is flat. Toned.

            Sam slides a hand in his pants and idly scratches himself and Dean is about to bark at him to take it to the bathroom but Sam pulls his hand out and…watches TV. Dean can see how Mythbusters might be cool if you haven’t seen it before but he’s seen it, original and repeats. This one is a repeat, the one about whether or not a scuba diver could be sucked up by a fire fighting helicopter which is, in Dean’s opinion, not one of their best.

            Sam is quiet.

            Dean waits, slowly relaxes.

            Sam stands up and takes off his pants. He lays back down. He still isn’t looking at Dean but Dean isn’t stupid. Sam crosses his ankles, all long legs and insolence. It heats Dean up, both in his groin and in his head. Both heads, so to speak.

            “Sam!” Dean snaps.

            Sam turns his head lazily to look at him. “What?” he asks. Those slightly tilted eyes, ocean-colored and half-lidded.

            “Oh for fuck’s sake! I’m going out!” No pun intended.

            Dean grabs his jacket on the way out. Sam sits up, looking stricken.

            Dean lets the door slam.

            He’ll find a bar, a waitress. Text Sam that he’ll be home in the morning.

 

#

 

            He finds a bar, no problem. It’s a dive. Not the kind of place people think of when they say ‘dive’ but a real dive, sticky floor, dark as the pit. The place is full of men doing the serious work of getting their drink on. One woman, with a voice that is cigarette smoke hoarse, tries to attach herself to him. She’s wearing a lot of make-up, she’s well on her way to her own serious drunk, and she thinks she’s funnier and more alluring than she really is.

            He politely declines several times until the bartender says, “Alice, he’s not interested. Leave the guy alone.”

            “Oh fuck you, Gary! We’re just talking!”

            “You’re hanging on him like a bad sweater,” Gary the bartender says. “You can sleep in my car tonight if you’re so desperate.”

            Alice looks at him, vulnerable. She’s thirty-five going on seventy, too skinny, with her chipped nail polish and cheap dangly earrings.

            “Nothing personal,” Dean says. “I’ve just had a shitty day. I’m sharing a hotel room with my brother, anyway.”

            “We’re just talking,” she says hopelessly, more drunken now.

            “Let me buy you another drink but I’ve got to hit the road,” Dean says.

            “Don’t give her any more or she’ll puke all over the bathroom again,” Gary says.

            “Goddamn it Gary! You’re not my boss!”

            Gary rolls his eyes.

            “Like your some expert on how I should live my life! With your three ex-wives and your shitty AA meetings! You’re so superior!”

            Dean leaves them to it. Outside the parking lot is grim and quiet. The Impala gleams under the parking lot light and it lifts his heart to see her sitting there. His Baby never lets him down, never asks the impossible of him.

            He feels so…sad.

            When he gets back to the hotel, the room is dark. Sam is in his bed under the covers and from what he can see, is wearing a t-shirt. Dean is pretty sure he isn’t asleep.

            Dean strips off his flannel and jeans and crawls into his own bed. He lets out a long breath, trying to gear down. Sleep. He wishes he’d had more to drink. He wishes his dad would call him back.

            He is on the verge of sleep when Sam whispers, “I’m sorry.”

            Dean groans and turns on his side, back to his brother. “I’m tired, Sammy. Go to sleep.”

            Sam doesn’t say anything else but he doesn’t go to sleep. Dean can tell. And now Dean can’t fucking go to sleep.

            “Dammit, what was that all about!” Dean sits up.

            “I…I thought it would be…I was just…” Sam sits up.

            “We can’t have sex, we’re brothers!”

            He can hear the confusion in Sam’s voice. “It wouldn’t be sex.”

            “I’m not attracted to you!” Dean says, ignoring the stupid.

            “I didn’t think you were!” Sam says and the shock in his voice sounds genuine although it’s hard to tell what with the whole wired jaw thing. Sam has to talk through his teeth.

            Dean snaps on the light and they both blink in the glare.

            “Why would I have sex with you if I wasn’t attracted to you?”

            Sam’s mouth drops open, or starts to but the whole wired shut thing makes his expression funky. “I…it’s not… People aren’t ‘attracted’ to dildos,” he says and it is not the slave trying to say or do the right thing, it’s a tone of voice Dean rarely hears from Sam. Like, Sam is genuinely talking to Dean, for real, without filters.

            “Attracted to dildos?” Dean says, completely lost.

            “Sorry, my bad. You probably don’t use a dildo. I just meant, you know, I get the whole you love women thing. But—”

            Dean has been working through the implications. “You’re comparing yourself to a _dildo_?”

            Sam’s look would actually make Dean happy under other circumstances. Sam is looking at him like he’s just announced that Antarctica is the capital of Alaska. Like he can’t believe the stupid.

            “Sam! You’re not a thing!”

            What Sam says next, completely unselfconscious, feels like a slap. “Dean, I’m a slave.”

            A slave. A dildo. A thing to be used.

            Dean absorbs that and the fury that rises in him is inarticulate, unfocused, a white hot burning thing that swamps his mind. It rises. “MOTHER FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!” he shouts. This is all so fucked up Dean is pretty much convinced that he should have just fucked Alice the bar hag and slept in the Impala.

            Sam startles and slides out of the bed and onto his knees. He’s dropped his eyes.

            Dean yelled loud enough someone beats on the wall and yells, “SHUT UP!”

            The silence after all that is large, filling the room.

            “Don’t you ever say that to me,” Dean says. “Don’t you ever say that again. You are my brother and what happened to you is beyond screwed up but with me, you are never, ever a slave, do you hear me?”

            “Yessir,” Sam says.

            “Look at me!”

            Sam raises his eyes. They are flat and emotionless. Sam’s face is a mask.

            “Do you understand me? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

            “Yesss—” He can hear Sam cutting off the ‘sir’.

            “You can yell at me, hit me, argue with me, call me names. It doesn’t matter because here you are not a slave! You’re my brother.”

            Sam doesn’t argue, just waits. And what the fuck does that mean? It makes him feel like he just kicked a puppy. But he told Sam he didn’t need to do that, jack Dean off. Why the hell is Sam doing it again? Is Sam gay? Is Sam wanting Dean?

            Dean needs a drink but when he starts to move, Sam flinches. Sam on his knees, a full body flinch. He hasn’t dropped his eyes and there’s still no expression in them.

            “Jesus, Sam, I’m not going to hit you!”

            “Yesss—” Again, that swallowed ‘sir’.

            Dean wants to tell Sam to get up but even as he starts to say it he realizes that it’s going to sound like an order. He gets the whiskey bottle. “You want a drink?”

            “No, thank you.”

            When Dean was a teen, he and his dad were tracking a werewolf through the woods and Dean came across a hognosed snake with pale eyes. Hognoses are not poisonous, they eat rats. There was no danger. But there was that same reptilian flatness. Dean would think if someone described Sam as having snake eyes he’d think they were saying Sam was dangerous but it isn’t that. It’s that everything that in Sam is hidden. There is no intelligence in those eyes. It’s not like he’s terrified. He’s. Just. Not. A. Person.

            He’s actually rather attractive in a weird sort of way that does absolutely nothing for Dean. He’s a handsome animal, empty and ready. It’s the uncanny valley of humanity. He is looking in Dean’s direction but it’s not entirely clear he’s bothering to track.

            Dean is so freaked by this whole thing. He’s drowning. He’s flipped some switch on Sam and he’s tired and pissed and sad. If he wasn’t so tired he thinks he’d get in the car and just go. Drive. Come back when his mind is clear. He drinks his glass of whiskey in one go and pours another one.

            “I’m not a real fan of drinking alone,” he says after a bit. “I mean, I do it. You know. But it feels pathetic.”

            Sam is silent. Apparently slaves are taught to be seen but not heard.

            “Do you like whiskey?” Dean is just thrashing around.

            “Yes.”

            “You want some?”

            Sam gets up, smooth, only a quiet crack of the joint of his knee giving away his particular Samness. He gets a glass, comes back, puts it on the bedside table and pours. He sits on the edge of his bed with his hands on his knees.

            “I don’t know what to do,” Dean says. “I’m… I didn’t mean to swear like that. I mean, I did. I just, it wasn’t directed at you. Just this whole messed up situation.”

            Sam reaches out without really looking, picks up his glass and maybe drinks a tiny sip of whiskey. Maybe not. It’s like some weird Japanese play where the actors do, like, gestures. His eyes were sort of looking at the area of Dean’s chest. Because Dean had ordered him to look at Dean.

            “Is there something you like better than whiskey?” Dean said. What the hell was he even asking? Filling the moment.

            “Weed,” Sam said.

            Dean blinked. He hadn’t really expected Sam to answer him. He almost said, _you’ve had weed?_ _You don’t know who Brad Pitt is but you’ve had weed?_ But obviously Sam had. He’d have said ‘marijuana’ or ‘pot’ or something. ‘Weed’ was something white people who smoked said.

            “You want to get some?”

            “No, I’m fine.”

            “I can find weed, it’s no big deal.”

            Sam didn’t say anything.

            “I’ll get some. I haven’t smoked in a couple of years.”

            Sam was quiet and there was another long awkward passage of time. Sam did kabuki with his whiskey again. Then said, “Maybe you should sell… me.”

            Maybe Dean had actually been suddenly transported to another country where they spoke some language he didn’t understand.

            “Sell you?”

            The empty eyes are looking at him, sort of. When he saw the hognose snake with the light eyes he assumed it was blind. May have been.

            “Yes. That would more than cover the medical costs,” Sam says.

            “The… look, the medical costs were paid with a credit card for Dean Kilmeister. And it wouldn’t make any difference if they weren’t and I had to, I don’t know, find a job fixing cars or something. I would never, ever, not help you.”

            “Thank you,” Sam said, and looked at his bare feet. Dean was so relieved to see a real reaction that he didn’t care Sammy wasn’t looking at him.

            “So, are we square?”

            Sam nodded and did a little more kabuki with the whiskey. “You could hire me out,” Sam said.

            “What…send you out on the street?” Dean groaned. “No, I told you.”

            “In big cities there’s Craig’s List,” Sam said. “But I could do other stuff. You know, paint houses or work for one of those people who take care of lawns. With the trucks and the lawnmowers and stuff.” Landscapers, Sam meant landscapers.

            “Is that was this is about? Money?”

            Sam shook his head a little. “No sssss—. No.”

            “Tell me what the hell’s going on?”

            “I don’t know what to do,” Sam said quietly. “I can’t help you hunt because I got messed up and you’re not hunting anymore. I can’t cook or something because I don’t know how and we don’t have a kitchen. I do the laundry. You feed me and you, you spend money and I don’t do anything. You bought me another hoody and everything. I don’t… I don’t know how to do stuff for you. Sometimes Walt would have me blow him to teach me a lesson. I didn’t think you were like that but I didn’t know what else…I’m, I just need to know what I can do for you. Do back.”

            It was true that Sam didn’t actually do much these days. Sam had a new pass. He could go places. But Dean didn’t like to leave him alone, even at the laundromat. The doctor at the slave hospital had said to Sam, ‘Kept your head up. Looks like a concussion, good thing you didn’t pass out.’ Or those bastards would have dragged Sam’s face down the road. Sam had told the intake nurse that he’d been sanded and she had written it down like she heard it every day. Dean had connected it until now. Sanded. Like sandpaper. They were going to sand Sam’s skin off his bones.

            “I screwed up your evening,” Sam says.

            “Shut up, Sam,” Dean says, but there’s no rancor. “You didn’t screw up my evening. I’m gonna ask you something but you don’t have to answer, you know. This is just, like, conversation. Do you like women?”

            “Sure,” Sam says. “Oh, do you mean for sex? Yeah.”

            “Do you like men?”

            Sam shrugs. “Sure. Do you?”

            “No.” Dean says. Does he like men? He’s not going to pretend he never experimented. Nothing really serious. He was never, like, super attracted to men. He could tell when a guy was good looking. But guys come with these barometers of desire attached to them and Dean was pretty sure little Dean has never stood at attention for a guy. Maybe sort of when he was really drunk and little Dean was wearing beer goggles—make that beer binoculars.

            Sam nods. He’s still setting off weird vibes in Dean but that mask is softening.

            “You just feel like—”

            “A parasite,” Sam says.

            Dean starts to say that he’s not. “I got my first job when I was fourteen,” Dean says.

            Sam looks curious.

            “Dad was laid up, broke his ankle, had to have a pin in it. We were in this dumb little town all summer and I got a job at this ice cream and hot dog stand cleaning up the tables, stocking ice for serving drinks. Cleaning up soft serve machines. Whatever they needed. When did you first start working?”

            Sam blinks, “I’ve never had a job,” he says like that isn’t obvious.

            “So when did you, you know, start doing hospitality?” Dean is pretty sure he doesn’t want to know.

            “Oh. I started working in a club when I was thirteen.” Earnestly he explains through his wired shut jaws, “You wouldn’t believe it now but I used to be small for my age. They buzzed my hair because they said it made my eyes look bigger. But then when I was sixteen I shot up to six feet so they had to sell. That’s when I went to be service stock for Mr. Tom.”

            Dean decides it’s one in the morning and he just can’t handle knowing any more.

            “Get some sleep, Sam,” he says.

 

#

 

            Sam comes back from running in the morning.

            Dean says, “How about we do something.”

            Sam stands in the doorway looking about as sexy as an IRS audit, dripping and stinking of exercise, Dean can smell him. It’s a relief. Dean did not wake up with the drunk sweats at five in the morning and find himself thinking about, not the pretty animal from last night but rather hands. Large hands on his dick.

            It’s not really about Sam. He’s not fantasizing about Sam. Besides, what he fantasizes is his own business. “I found a case. We’ll get packed up, get breakfast. Then head out.”

            Sam smiles, not showing his wired together teeth.

            “I’m pretty sure it’s a rawhead,” Dean says.

            Sam cocks his head like ‘what’s a rawhead?’

            “Things that go after kids. The monster under the bed. I’ll tell you about them on the drive.” Rawheads are easy. Taser the fuckers and be done. Then he’ll get back in touch with the lawyer and see about the next steps in getting Sam free.

            What could go wrong, really?

 

# # #


End file.
